Speaking.io is a free web guide to how to present effectively in public curated by @Zach Holman, a subject matter expert, having spoken at a large number of conferences.

The Guide is elegantly organized in multiple sections, each containing a small set of more specific information chapters, and  all accessible from the home page index. 

Good resource for novice public speakers and presenters, as well as another great example of content curation at work. In this case the author has curated his know-how, notes and previous writings into one cohesive and well present gallery.

Helpful. Well designed. 8/10

Check it out now: http://speaking.io/ 

Follow Speaking.io on Twitter

via @Ana Cristina Pratas

Recordit.co is a new app for the Mac that allows you to easily record any screen action and to share it instantly with anyone.

Recordit is a super-simplified screencasting tool, that takes away any possible complexity or technical issues from recording screen actions.

This tool is ideal to share or report a bug you encounter in a certain app or to show where to click and what to choose to someone unfamiliar with a certain online service.

Free to use.

Download it now: http://recordit.co/ 

N.B.: It requires Mac OSX 10.9

The Data Visualisation Catalogue is an on-going project developed by Severino Ribecca which attempts to index and catalogue all of the data visualization approaches available, in order to help journalists, designers and professional communicators identify more easily the type of data visualization most appropriate for their needs.

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In the Catalogue there are now over 50 different data visualization approaches that have been identified, and about a third of them have also been documented with a basic description, visual examples, relevant tags to associate it with their possibe best uses, variations, and with a list of alternative tools available to create that type of data chart.

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You can browse the catalogue also by using the "Search by Function" which is designed to aid in choosing the appropiate data visualization approach based on the specific communication need at hand, or with the "View by List" approach, which organizes dataviz methods by types. 

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Check it out: http://blog.visual.ly/the-data-visualization-catalogue/ 

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Hat Tip to @LelioSimi

Placeit is a great web app which makes it extremely easy to create professional high-quality photo-shots of your product, service or web app inserted within pre-designed environments. 

There are already over 550 ready-made setups/environments in which you can integrate any image you upload or reference by URL.

The images you provide are perfectly integrated into the ready-made shots taking into considerations also perspective and angle of the placement. 

Most ready-made environments are based on photographs of smartphones or tablets within different locations.

Finaly composited images can be download for free at a resolution of up to 640x480.

Higher resolutions images are charged according to various monthly plans or by image. 

Pricing info: 

• https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/782adzfe036gp2y/1s-eutnj.png 
• https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/spa/782adzfe036gp2y/sujnkg_n.png 

My comment: Great app. Very useful and simple to use. Placeit photo templates and technology makes it super-easy for anyone to create great product shots in seconds and at a fraction of it would cost to creat them in traditional ways. Five stars.

Try it out now: https://placeit.net/ 

Thanks to "photo spheres" and Google Maps you can now create your own "street view" of any place on earth.

To do so you must first shoort "photo spheres" with a dedicated app for your Android smartphone or through your DLSR camera. 

"Creating Street View from your photo spheres is as easy as connecting the dots into what looks like a “constellation” of stars."

You can even connect your photo spheres to our Google's own Street View panoramas.

SlideSpeech is a free web app which allows you to upload .ppt or .odp presentations and to automatically add a voice over, digitally generated, that will automatically read all of the speaker notes associated to each slide.

Alternatively you can record your own voice via SlideSpeech, one slide at a time or upload pre-made audio files to go with each slide.

Under the hood there is also a little interaction facility that makes it easy to add a question and a set of possible answers at the end of the presentation. 

The final presentation is posted online at its own URL, can be embedded in any web site or blog and can also be downloaded as a video or .zip file. A simple stat facility keeps also track of how many view your presentation gets.

It is also possible to set whether other people will be allowed to edit and remix your presentation and whther or not you want search engines to index it.

Available on the web and on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

My comment: Excellent free tool with lots of good features under the hood. Unfortunately you only have three digital voices to choose from: two males (English, German) and one female. Great download options but .zip is not enabled yet and the video option requires some additional Quicktime plugin to work but it doesn't say which one. Overall promising but with a few rough corners still.

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://slidespeech.com/ 

App store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slide-speech-player-global/id674649592?ls=1&mt=8 

Android: http://www.amazon.com/SlideSpeech/dp/B008OPTKSG/ 

Windows Phone: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-nz/store/app/slidespeech/bdbed282-890d-4153-9a38-3f7ae035bf01 

(thanks to Ana Cristina Pratas for discovering this gem)

If you are looking for a way to publish your preferred photos that you have on your Mac or PC straight to Instagram, without having to first transfer or copy them to your iOS or Android smartphone, here is a free tool that does exactly this.

Gramblr is available for both Mac and PC and it allows you to upload any picture you have sitting on your hard disk to your Instagram account. You can add your comment and hashtags, but you cannot take advantage of the filters you normally available in Instagram.

Free.

Download for Mac: http://gramblr.com/gramblr.dmg

Download for PC: http://bitly.com/WbBEEg

More info: https://dl-web.dropbox.com/spa/782adzfe036gp2y/obwuqrvr.jpg

GIFDeck is a free web app which allows you to convert any published Slideshare presentation into an animated GIF ready to be published.

GIFDeck allows you to specify the URL of the slideshare presentation you want to convert, the number of frames to extract from it and the amount of time you want each image to be displayed.

Free to use.

Excellent way to promote content visually. Works great on Twitter. 

Try it out now: http://gifdeck.in/ 

If you are looking for a bird's eye view on what alternative collaboration tools are now available for different kind of projects and purposes, I do have what you are looking for.

The new Best Online Collaboration Tools 2014 directory is now public. It contains over 370 collaboration tools organized in over 25 different categories ranging from video-conferencing to screen-sharing, collaborative reviewing and many more.

The tools listed have all been checked and verified and represent my own personal census on what is available today for each one of the categories listed. There is no attempt (yet) to provide individual evaluations or recommendations, though I have tried to subjectively rank tools in each category according to their value and importance.

The directory is updated weekly.

New suggestions, comments and request for revisions and changes are highly welcome.

Free to use.

Try it out now: https://best-online-collaboration-tools.zeef.com/robin.good (370+ tools)

Previous editions:

• Best Online Collaboration Tools 2013 (250+ tools)
   
• Best Online Collaboration Tools 2008 - 2012 (277 tools)

Pics.io is free online 32-bit basic photo editor that works also with very large images. It runs in your browser, is fast and you can see edits and adjustments in real time.

Image editing features include cropping, rotation, bright/contr, saturation, curves, invert, temperature and a few effects.

You can open any .jpg, .bmp and .png image and save your edited work in .png.

Key strengths for Pics.io are speed, extreme ease of use, and a thin command set useful for all basic image editing work. 

No need to register, download or login. It works instantly.

Free to use. 

Try it out now: http://edit.pics.io/ 

Evver is a free web app which allows you to create music slideshows with extreme ease. You simply select your favorite pictures (from 10 to 100), you pick up a song, among the available soundtracks, and the rest is automatically done for you.

You can re-arrange the order in which the photos will be shown in the final video and delete the ones that you don't want to use and you are set to go.

Evver edits your pics in sync with the music and creates a music video that can be easily shared on any social media or embedded to your site or blog.

My comment: Very, very easy to use. The selection of music tracks that you can use is presently very limited. The final result is good, but - as you can see from my sample - not as good as it could be. 
 

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://www.evver.com/ 

Similar tools: http://slide.ly 

Sample video (created by me): http://www.evver.com/play/49ef08ad6e7f26d7f200e1b2b9e6e4ac 

Here's a great selection of 20 apps for Instagram that allow you to add special visual effects, shoot in the dark, add text and graphic elements to your images or create video clips with your best shots.

Short reviews easy to understand.

Useful. 7/10

Full set of reviews: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/instagram-photo-and-video-apps/ 

Here is a good collection of nine web tools that allow you to create multimedia-rich, visual story-telling, immersive stories and reports alongside some impressive examples.

My comments: Great tools list showcasing a nice array of visual presentation tools that can be effectively for journalistic reporting.

Useful. Resourceful. Great examples. 8/10

Original article: http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/9-tools-for-journalists-to-produce-immersive-stories/s2/a554425/